What Israel Has Lost

A few weeks back, Charles Krauthammer wrote an article, 'Israel's Intifada Victory,' in which he argued that rather than bringing Israel to its knees, the intifada had been a strategic disaster for the Palestinians. In one sense, Krauthammer is clearly correct: the Palestinian terror campaign now appears to be waning, and the construction of Israel's security fence promises to greatly minimize the threat of future terrorist incursions from the West Bank into Israel. But in another crucial sense, the intifada has been seriously detrimental to Israel. It has made the Israeli Palestinian conflict the focus of Muslims around the world, and isolated Israel internationally more than at any point in its short history.
During the years of the Oslo process, there was a very slow process of normalization of relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors. Strong defenders of Israel, such as Dennis Prager, argued that this was important enough to move ahead with...(Read Full Article)